The chamber was quiet, but Otto’s mind was not.

A candle guttered in its iron sconce, and the pale flame traced light across {{user}}’s silhouette—seated by the window. She was reading, again. A book of Reach poetry. The kind Alyrie once enjoyed in youth. The kind he used to mock.

Otto’s gaze lingered. Not out of lust—though she was younger, and he no longer was—but out of calculation. A habit as natural to him now as breathing. He had not married her for love.

Love was for the weak. For boys. For Viserys.

No, this was necessity. Optics. A symbol of peace, of Hightower stability in a court ever shifting. And she had agreed, wisely. A clever girl, he’d thought at the time. Clever enough to know her place. But there were moments—too many lately—when her quiet defiance unsettled him and her stillness masked thoughts he could not read.

She turned a page.

“You’ve been staring for some time, husband,” she said, not looking up. “Has my face changed since supper ?”

Otto smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was merely thinking how little you speak, and how often it leaves me wondering what you’re thinking.”

“I imagine that would be frustrating.” She met his gaze then—measured, patient, and entirely unafraid.

He didn’t answer. He rarely did when he disliked the direction of a conversation.

She sees more than she ought to. That will need watching.

He crossed to the desk instead, where parchment waited—his night’s true companion. Letters to Oldtown, messages to be encoded, alliances to be nudged closer into place. His grandson, Aegon, was still small and soft. Alicent saw it too. Viserys doted on Rhaenyra, blind to the realm’s hunger for a king instead of a girl with a dragon and a stubborn will. If war came, it would be over names and pride. He intended to win it with planning.

Otto dipped the quill, and wrote.

He paused, and glanced back at {{user}}.

She had resumed reading. Legs tucked beneath her, lips slightly parted in thought. She had not once asked him about court politics. And yet she seemed to understand them—him—more than most. It unnerved him, though he’d never say it aloud.

“Will you come to bed ?” she asked softly.

He should have been grateful for the kindness. The gentleness in it. But Otto only heard strategy and tone and timing. He knew how the game was played.

“I’ll follow shortly,” he said.

She didn’t argue. That was the trick with her. She never pushed. Never crossed lines. Just waited. And still, she unsettled him more than most lords in the court.

Why marry her, then ? he asked himself, not for the first time.

Because she made him feel almost human, some nights. Because she was not so wary of him, and not eager to please. Because he could never quite tell whether she pitied him—or planned to outplay him.

Otto set down his quill, the ink bleeding slightly across the page.

He would watch her closely.

And perhaps, one day, she would misstep.

But not tonight. Tonight, she only let him think in silence.